News Articles

Matt Cronin's article today is based on an article/interview by Moya, which is indeed from September 11th, currently page 7 on this website http://www.tennistopic.com/archivo/ so very odd to draw attention to it today.

Moya understands Andy's post Wimbledon dip, because he felt the same after winning the Davis Cup: It was the most wanted goal and win the Davis lost a little motivation and sense of playing tournaments......the effort I Davis Cup by winning the vacuum left me mentally. (Thanks, google translate!)http://www.tennistopic.com/philippe-chatrier/firmas/liberacion-peligrosa/

I agree blaming Lendl was daft as Lendl isn't telling Andy what his goals are, he is helping Andy achieve his goals. Suspect the article was written before Andy announced the surgery so will forgive that. Otherwise fair points.

I just read the link re andy not being Rafa or Novak and thought yes, we know, we're glad!

... and he isn't Roger either.

I'm sure the article was written before the surgery was announced. That last sentence - 'Murray recently pulled out of the Asian swing to undergo back surgery.' - strikes me as being thrown in as an afterthought, so also agree that the points are fair.

Andy - Murray comes and goes on twitter, but it looks like he's back on it to stay. An admitted tennis geek, Murray is constantly tweeting about other matches he's watching and his support for other players, men or women.

Maggie May - Murray's border terrier, Maggie (or his girlfriend, Kim Sears, if you believe dogs can't work a Blackberry), spends her days wreaking havoc in London's parks and tweeting about her never-ending war with her brother, Murray's other dog, Rusty. And she's very funny about it.

Judy - Eighty percent of Murray's mother's tweets are related to cakes, 10 percent are about her sons and the remaining 10 percent are a hodgepodge of witty observations about the tour, her travels and ... darts. Just go with it.

I thought that bow was ridiculous anyway. Goodness knows how HM managed to keep a straight face. Somebody at the Palace should have told the Wimbledon authorities that these days all that is required is a nod of the head. Bowing like that from the waist went out the window decades ago.

Aileen........they didn't have to do it! They were given the choice and both players wanted to do it, which I thought was rather nice!

You can criticize the lack of a proper off-season in tennis on any number of grounds, especially if you choose to ignore the fact that tennis has always been a sport not of seasons but of intervals, the most common ones being the times between the four Grand Slams.

But Andy Murray, currently No. 3 in the rankings, can make a pretty good case for the need for a meaningful off-season as he recovers from back surgery (which he underwent on Monday) meant to redress a recurrent disc/sciatic nerve problem. For about two years, he managed the pain that caused him to either abandon matches (in Rome this year) or miss tournaments altogether (this year’s French Open).

Now that that’s over, Murray will face the challenge of taking what probably will amount to three-and-a-half month hiatus from competition—a break that will certainly kill the momentum he had built up starting at the Olympic Games last summer. It won’t exactly be back to square one for Murray; with two major titles and an Olympic gold medal tucked away, he’s unlikely to wonder, as he must have as recently as the summer of 2012, if he can win the big ones. But the interruption will be certainly raise questions in his mind, starting with the most obvious one: Will he ever be the same player again?

“Sure he will,” the chorus will chirp. Nobody has said that the injury is in any way career-threatening. And Murray himself has stressed that the surgery was minor. But bad backs are tricky, as former Grand Slam finalists Miloslav Mecir and Marcelo Rios can attest, and that shadow of doubt is bound to flicker in the back of Murray’s mind until he banishes it months from now by returning to top form.

Just how long will his recovery take? That’s question number two for Murray, who hasn’t officially announced that he’s pulling the plug on his year. But it’s hard to imagine him skipping the entire Asian tour and getting himself into fighting trim for the ATP World Tour Finals. Would it be wise for him to return on indoor hard courts and have to go all-out against top-shelf competition through what might be five matches in under a week? Certainly not.

The most likely scenario is that Murray will shoot for his customary intense training in Florida sometime after the official ATP season ends in early November, provided his rehab goes as expected. He would then be good to go for the 2014 Australian swing. Murray won’t have played a competitive match since mid-September of this year, but he’s habitually played a tune-up tournament (Brisbane) before the Australian Open. He won’t have to fret about changing a proven formula for success.

It’s impossible to say what challenges Murray will face in rehab or fitness training following his surgery. But we can safely assume that this break in his career will pose mental tests in the early stages of his return. How can it not, as it will be entirely new territory? But in that regard, he can look to help from an unlikely source, his rival Rafael Nadal.

The long, seven-month-plus break Nadal took starting in July of 2012 was the longest period in many years that an elite player had gone missing from competition. But the way Nadal bounced back after that break is likely to prove inspirational to Murray.

This is a theme that the Murray camp and partisans have banged on. His friend and former Davis Cup teammate Jamie Baker went as far as to tell the BBC: “We can’t underestimate how tough emotionally the last 12 months has been, so it’s understandable if he’s a little bit burned out, and this break will give him the best chance of picking up more major titles next year.”

Well, OK. But there’s another factor in play here. Murray stands to lose the 1,270 ranking points he earned in Tokyo, Shanghai, Paris, and the World Tour Finals last year, with no chance to replace them. David Ferrer trails Murray by fewer than 400 points, so he’s a sure bet to replace him at No. 3. No. 5 Roger Federer, No. 6 Tomas Berdych, and No. 7 Juan Martin del Potro are all also within striking distance of Murray. For seeding purposes, Murray will need to come back strong—and quickly—if he returns to the tour Down Under.

Those numbers show how tenuous Murray’s place at the top is, and how much he’s risking

Andre Agassi believes Andy Murray has more to give despite his recent slump, and admits he expected the Scot to struggle after winning Wimbledon in the summer.

Murray was beaten by Stanislas Wawrinka in the quarter-finals of the US Open and relinquished his crown having arrived to Flushing Meadows as the Wimbledon champion. The British No. 1 has since undergone surgery on his back and could miss the rest of the campaign, including the season-ending ATP World Tour Finals at London's O2 Arena.

Agassi, who waited over two years to win his second grand slam after triumphing at Wimbledon in 1992, believes Murray faces new challenges after ending Britain's 76-year wait for a male champion at SW19.

"I expected a let-down," Agassi said on Murray after his win over Novak Djokovic at Wimbledon.

"I've believed in him for years. When I watch what he can do on the tennis court, I say he's as good as anybody at his best.

"But it's also when he's playing with conviction, it's also when he's playing with being focused and he's not distracting himself.

"There's a lot that goes into winning these things and a lot of it's in your head and a lot of it's preparing right. He's starting to figure all those things out and he has a lot more to come."

Meanwhile, Agassi believes that Rafael Nadal will be regarded as one of the best players, even if he does not surpass Roger Federer's record of 17 grand slams.

"I think it's fair to say that Rafa has a shot at it [passing Federer] and one might argue has a good shot at it," eight-time major winner Agassi said, speaking at the launch of his training equipment in the UK.

"I don't see anyone winning the French [Open] for the next couple of years, but him. But that's assuming he stays healthy. But this guy I don't think has to win more to prove that he can be argued as the best of all-time."

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You can criticize the lack of a proper off-season in tennis on any number of grounds, especially if you choose to ignore the fact that tennis has always been a sport not of seasons but of intervals, the most common ones being the times between the four Grand Slams.

But Andy Murray, currently No. 3 in the rankings, can make a pretty good case for the need for a meaningful off-season as he recovers from back surgery (which he underwent on Monday) meant to redress a recurrent disc/sciatic nerve problem. For about two years, he managed the pain that caused him to either abandon matches (in Rome this year) or miss tournaments altogether (this year’s French Open).

Now that that’s over, Murray will face the challenge of taking what probably will amount to three-and-a-half month hiatus from competition—a break that will certainly kill the momentum he had built up starting at the Olympic Games last summer. It won’t exactly be back to square one for Murray; with two major titles and an Olympic gold medal tucked away, he’s unlikely to wonder, as he must have as recently as the summer of 2012, if he can win the big ones. But the interruption will be certainly raise questions in his mind, starting with the most obvious one: Will he ever be the same player again?

“Sure he will,” the chorus will chirp. Nobody has said that the injury is in any way career-threatening. And Murray himself has stressed that the surgery was minor. But bad backs are tricky, as former Grand Slam finalists Miloslav Mecir and Marcelo Rios can attest, and that shadow of doubt is bound to flicker in the back of Murray’s mind until he banishes it months from now by returning to top form.

Just how long will his recovery take? That’s question number two for Murray, who hasn’t officially announced that he’s pulling the plug on his year. But it’s hard to imagine him skipping the entire Asian tour and getting himself into fighting trim for the ATP World Tour Finals. Would it be wise for him to return on indoor hard courts and have to go all-out against top-shelf competition through what might be five matches in under a week? Certainly not.

The most likely scenario is that Murray will shoot for his customary intense training in Florida sometime after the official ATP season ends in early November, provided his rehab goes as expected. He would then be good to go for the 2014 Australian swing. Murray won’t have played a competitive match since mid-September of this year, but he’s habitually played a tune-up tournament (Brisbane) before the Australian Open. He won’t have to fret about changing a proven formula for success.

It’s impossible to say what challenges Murray will face in rehab or fitness training following his surgery. But we can safely assume that this break in his career will pose mental tests in the early stages of his return. How can it not, as it will be entirely new territory? But in that regard, he can look to help from an unlikely source, his rival Rafael Nadal.

The long, seven-month-plus break Nadal took starting in July of 2012 was the longest period in many years that an elite player had gone missing from competition. But the way Nadal bounced back after that break is likely to prove inspirational to Murray.

This is a theme that the Murray camp and partisans have banged on. His friend and former Davis Cup teammate Jamie Baker went as far as to tell the BBC: “We can’t underestimate how tough emotionally the last 12 months has been, so it’s understandable if he’s a little bit burned out, and this break will give him the best chance of picking up more major titles next year.”

Well, OK. But there’s another factor in play here. Murray stands to lose the 1,270 ranking points he earned in Tokyo, Shanghai, Paris, and the World Tour Finals last year, with no chance to replace them. David Ferrer trails Murray by fewer than 400 points, so he’s a sure bet to replace him at No. 3. No. 5 Roger Federer, No. 6 Tomas Berdych, and No. 7 Juan Martin del Potro are all also within striking distance of Murray. For seeding purposes, Murray will need to come back strong—and quickly—if he returns to the tour Down Under.

Those numbers show how tenuous Murray’s place at the top is, and how much he’s risking

Care to share which bits are rubbish and why, or are you just having a moan?

I think it's generally a fair assessment, although they've over-egged the risk of Andy dropping down the rankings. He's unlikely to drop below 4th by the end of this year, and while a slow start to next year's season could see him drop further, it's not a huge risk, at least not compared with continuing to play with an injury that needs attending to.

Also, unless Ferrer can turn his form around, he's going to start dropping down the rankings himself.

He has won the US Open, Wimbledon and Olympic Gold. His place in the history of the game is assured. Hopefully he will return pain free and raring to go. If however the worse came to the worse, and he couldn't return , then however sad that would be for us, I suspect it wouldn't destroy him in the way it would have done if this had happened 18 months ago.